The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home

In his groundbreaking book Predictably Irrational, social scientist Dan Ariely revealed the multiple biases that lead us into making unwise decisions. Now, in The Upside of Irrationality, he exposes the surprising negative and positive effects irrationality can have on our lives. Focusing on our behaviors at work and in relationships, he offers new insights and eye-opening truths about what really motivates us on the job.

Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations

Every day we work hard to motivate ourselves, the people we live with, the people who work for and do business with us. In this way much of what we do can be defined as being motivators. From the boardroom to the living room, our role as motivators is complex, and the more we try to motivate partners and children, friends and coworkers, the clearer it becomes that the story of motivation is far more intricate and fascinating than we've assumed.

Idrees Haddad says:"Great insights into what motivates and demotivates"

Behavioral economist Dan Ariely revolutionized the way we think about ourselves, our minds, and our actions in his books Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The Honest Truth About Dishonesty. Ariely applies this scientific analysis of the human condition in his "Ask Ariely" Q and A column in the Wall Street Journal, in which he responds to readers who write in with personal conundrums ranging from the serious to the curious.

Enhanced Interrogation: Inside the Minds and Motives of the Islamic Terrorists Trying to Destroy America

In the dark days immediately after 9/11, the CIA turned to Dr. James Mitchell to help craft an interrogation program designed to elicit intelligence from just-captured top al-Qa'ida leaders and terror suspects. A civilian contractor who had spent years training US military members to resist interrogation should they be captured, Mitchell, aware of the urgent need to prevent impending catastrophic attacks, worked with the CIA to implement "enhanced interrogation techniques" - which included waterboarding.

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

Richard H. Thaler has spent his career studying the radical notion that the central agents in the economy are humans - predictable, error-prone individuals. Misbehaving is his arresting, frequently hilarious account of the struggle to bring an academic discipline back down to earth - and change the way we think about economics, ourselves, and our world.

Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. The reason, the authors explain, is that, being human, we are all susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes make us poorer and less healthy; we often make bad decisions involving education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, the family, and even the planet itself.

Pre-Suasion: Channeling Attention for Change

The author of the legendary best seller Influence, social psychologist Robert Cialdini, shines a light on effective persuasion and reveals that the secret doesn't lie in the message itself but in the key moment before that message is delivered.

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

All our lives are constrained by limited space and time, limits that give rise to a particular set of problems. What should we do, or leave undone, in a day or a lifetime? How much messiness should we accept? What balance of new activities and familiar favorites is the most fulfilling? These may seem like uniquely human quandaries, but they are not: computers, too, face the same constraints, so computer scientists have been grappling with their version of such problems for decades.

The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less

By synthesizing current research in the social sciences, Schwartz makes the counterintuitive case that eliminating choices can greatly reduce the stress, anxiety, and busyness of our lives. He offers eleven practical steps on how to limit choices to a manageable number, have the discipline to focus on the important ones and ignore the rest, and ultimately derive greater satisfaction from the choices you have to make.

Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

Everyone would benefit from seeing further into the future, whether buying stocks, crafting policy, launching a new product, or simply planning the week's meals. Unfortunately, people tend to be terrible forecasters. As Wharton professor Philip Tetlock showed in a landmark 2005 study, even experts' predictions are only slightly better than chance. However, an important and underreported conclusion of that study was that some experts do have real foresight.

Ego Is the Enemy

"While the history books are filled with tales of obsessive visionary geniuses who remade the world in their images with sheer, almost irrational force, I've found that history is also made by individuals who fought their egos at every turn, who eschewed the spotlight, and who put their higher goals above their desire for recognition." (From the prologue)

The Content Trap: A Strategist's Guide to Digital Change

Companies everywhere face two major challenges today: getting noticed and getting paid. To confront these obstacles, Bharat Anand examines a range of businesses around the world, from The New York Times to The Economist, from Chinese Internet giant Tencent to Scandinavian digital trailblazer Schibsted, and from talent management to the future of education.

The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us

Reading this book will make you less sure of yourself - and thats a good thing. In The Invisible Gorilla, Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, creators of one of psychology's most famous experiments, use remarkable stories and counterintuitive scientific findings to demonstrate an important truth: Our minds dont work the way we think they do. We think we see ourselves and the world as they really are, but were actually missing a whole lot.

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

In this must-listen book for anyone striving to succeed, pioneering psychologist Angela Duckworth shows parents, educators, students, and businesspeople - both seasoned and new - that the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent but a focused persistence called "grit". Why do some people succeed and others fail? Sharing new insights from her landmark research on grit, MacArthur "genius" Angela Duckworth explains why talent is hardly a guarantor of success.

Influence: Science and Practice, ePub, 5th Edition

Widely used in classes, as well as sold to people operating successfully in the business world, the eagerly awaited revision of Influence reminds the listener of the power of persuasion. Cialdini organizes compliance techniques into six categories based on psychological principles that direct human behavior: reciprocation, consistency, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity.

Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces That Shape Behavior

If you're like most people, you think that your choices and behaviors are driven by your individual personal tastes and opinions. You wear a certain jacket because you like the way it looks. You picked a particular career because you found it interesting. The notion that our choices are driven by our own personal thoughts and opinions is patently obvious. Right? Wrong. Without our realizing it, other people's behavior has a huge influence on everything we do at every moment of our lives, from the mundane to the momentous occasion.

Publisher's Summary

This program is enhanced with 14 never-before-heard episodes of Dan Ariely's "Arming the Donkeys" podcast, available exclusively on this audiobook!

The New York Times bestselling author of Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality returns with thought-provoking work to challenge our preconceptions about dishonesty and urge us to take an "honest" look at ourselves.

Does the chance of getting caught affect how likely we are to cheat? How do companies pave the way for dishonesty? Does collaboration make us more honest or less so? Does religion improve our honesty?

Most of us think of ourselves as honest, but, in fact, we all cheat. From Washington to Wall Street, the classroom to the workplace, unethical behavior is everywhere. None of us is immune, whether it's the white lie to head off trouble or padding our expense reports. In The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, award-winning, bestselling author Dan Ariely turns his unique insight and innovative research to the question of dishonesty.

Generally, we assume that cheating, like most other decisions, is based on a rational cost-benefit analysis. But Ariely argues, and then demonstrates, that it's actually the irrational forces that we don't take into account that often determine whether we behave ethically or not. For every Enron or political bribe, there are countless hidden commissions, and knockoff purses.

In The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, Ariely shows why some things are easier to lie about; how getting caught matters less than we think; and how business practices pave the way for unethical behavior, both intentionally and unintentionally. Ariely explores how unethical behavior works in the personal, professional, and political worlds, and how it affects all of us, even as we think of ourselves as having high moral standards.

But all is not lost. Ariely also identifies what keeps us honest, pointing the way for achieving higher ethics in our everyday lives. With compelling personal and academic findings, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty will change the way we see ourselves, our actions, and others.

Dan Ariely's "Honest Truth About Dishonesty" is a nice divergence from his earlier books on irrationality, and contains much more original psychological research than these books. If you've enjoyed his prior books, you'll enjoy this one.

Ariely's books are all connected by the theme of how it is that we fool ourselves. In this work, Ariely shows that we're fooling ourselves and others just a little bit, almost all of the time through a number of clever experiments. What's particularly interesting is that Ariely finds that this cheating is not driven by cost/benefit tradeoffs -- the generally accepted rationale for why people cheat -- but, as in keeping with Ariely's prior work, cheating is found to be driven by less rational motivations. Changes in cost/benefit do matter, but opportunities for rationalization, the effect of social norms, and cognitive dissonance are at least equally important.

I don't know why Ariely keeps choosing Simon Jones to read his books. Jones is a great reader, but in a strongly British theatrical manner. Ariely, whom you'll get to hear in podcasts appended to the end of the book, or whom you may have heard on a TED talk, speaks American English with an Israeli accent. Further, the places Ariely writes about are almost always either in the US or Israel and almost never in England. If you know what the author sounds like, Jones seems to be a strange choice.

I have enjoyed all of Dan Ariely's books and this one was no exception. It was interesting to read how we are all a little dishonest at some point or another. I found it fun spouting the research in this book to family and friends who insist they never lie or cheat. You will definitely learn more about how society behaves but I think, more importantly, you'll get a better understanding how you sometimes behave.

I know others don't like the English narrator but I think he is perfect for the job and narrates with a wonderful sense of irony.

I am a huge fan of Dan Ariely. I have read his previous two books (predictably irrational) multiple times and recommended them to friends and co-workers. And he continues that same work in this book by describing the experiments he's done that deal mostly with honesty. Many of the experiments are repeats from what he has described in previous books -- which was okay with me, because I like to hear about them again.

If he had stuck with the same format as his previous books and described his clinical work only, that would have been best. But, he goes on to offer explanations of why he thinks people are dishonest and of course, none of that can be supported with any evidence.

And he makes some pretty big leaps to conclusions on why people do what they do in the experiments he conducts. It's one thing to measure the outcome, but his conclusions (while put forth as speculation) are not based on anything but his own reasoning and logic. Which may turn out to be true, but the fact is there is no way (at this time) to determine the "why" and just because that's what he thinks does not make it so.

(ie - the sun rises around the same time each morning. Good, we've established this as a fact. Now, for the why...well because it's driven by a god in a charriot, of course. At least that's what some people believed thousands of years ago, but that didn't make it true.)

We have no way of knowing why people cheat and lie. Yes, he can measure that we do and that it gets worse or better under different conditions, but it's a big, big leap from that place to saying they do it because of X. There is no way to know X. At least not at this time. So he shouldn't speculate -- even when he doesn't state it as a fact it still comes off as if he's sure he's got the right answer for the why.

First I would like to say that the reader is great. Whenever a English accented reader is needed he should be the first one chosen because he has the flavor needed without the difficulty to understand.

Anyway I love all Dan Ariely's books. In many ways they are similar to "Freakenomics" but I tend to like them a bit better because they seem to me to be scientific in their conclusions... although both are great.

This book about honesty is something we all need to think about and it makes me wonder if humans can ever really be honest.

The one shortcoming in the book is basicallly talking about lying to ourselves he never goes into religion. For example Christians claim to follow Jesus yet he primarily preached sharing all we have with others... particularly the poor... which is something few do. Modern Christians today mainly attack abortion and gays which is something Jesus never preached against yet the main thing he did preach is largely ignored. Not trying to pick on Christians because the same contradictions (lies) are found in all religions.

Would you consider the audio edition of The Honest Truth About Dishonesty to be better than the print version?

The audio edition of The Honest Truth About Dishonesty is better than the print version only in that it makes the information all that more accessible to me...I've discovered that I'm an aural learner.

Any additional comments?

This book was highly interesting to me because all of the little studies that Ariely conducted dealt directly with how I behave and how I observe others behaving on a daily basis. As I was reading it, I became acutely aware of how, like most people according to Ariely, I continually rationalize cheating in my own life. This book is thought provoking and kind of fun too. I recommend it.

Where does The Honest Truth About Dishonesty rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

This book is incredibly thought- provoking! I love books that developer or change the way I see the world or my life. This book achieves that in a way that kept my attention. Because of that I see as a must listen to book. It is my favourite book at this moment. I now hove lots of books I think are the best I've listened to so it's hard to say its my favourite as it may be a lie.

I'm glad I bought it.

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

The narrator keeps the story moving. At the end of the book there are interviews conducted by the author. The author has a different accent.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

This book makes you consider the subtleties of being truthful and honest and the many unconscious, reasons for dishonesty. The book shows how mass deception can be acceptable in organizations such as Enron and in our governments.

The author does many social experiments and many of the outcomes are counter-intuitive. Those findings were the most provocative part of the book.

I also enjoyed the end of the book where the author let us listen to interviews with others he collaborated with in the formulation of his findings expressed in the book.

The details of the book is biased to author's personal interests and informations and limited to regions and time. There is no references to studies and research. There is no historical analysis. Monetary system is legalised theft and no link to it while he talks about the unfairness and unfair system in place so on. There is some truth. So thank you so much.